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Help Your Children Listen in Church

We have attended Family Integrated churches for many years now. Before that, we tried to keep our children in the church service as much as possible.

One of the biggest fears of a young mama in a family-integrated church setting (or any time she takes her children to a place where they are expected to be quiet) is the fear of her children making a terrible racket all throughout the service and totally disrupting everyone’s worship time. (Ask me how I know.)

We bring in toys and coloring pages and a million other distractions, but then we wonder if they are soaking up any of the actual teaching that is going on at church. We know we want to worship as a family, but we don’t seem to be very good at it.

A few years ago during a church service, I happened to glance over at another family’s well-behaved children and realized they were all sitting there with some sort of worksheet and a pen, listening quite intently to all that was going on. Curiosity got the better of me and after the service I casually walked over to where they had been sitting to sneak a peek at what had been captivating their interests. The worksheets contained a list of hand-written “church” words and the children were putting tally marks next to each of the words as they heard them in the service.

Brilliance!

I kept telling myself someday I would do that…and I kept forgetting.

Well, I finally got around to it this past week and I want to share them all with you!

6 comments

I tried this with my 3 year old…and it does help. I just wrote down words according to what the pastor was preaching…If he was preaching on Moses, then Moses would be one of the words. I only had 2 words for her to listen for so that it would not be overwhelming. I did have to help her listen for those words as she was only 3 and this was new to her.

Thank you. I am going to try this one.I am Catholic and I found Catholicmom.com has the gospel reading for the day. It has a coloring sheet, word search, and fill in the blank for that day's bible readings. It does help. However, this one will make for a nice change and them "listening" instead of focusing on the coloring sheet. Blessings.

I think having a family devotion time at home helps also. The children realize that when we are learning about God, it's time to sit still and listen. If they are practicing this daily at home, it starts to become a carry over to the church service.

We have our children look up the Bible verses that are referenced in the sermon and then write them down. Helps them to learn the books of the Bible, learn the Word, stay engaged, and writing/spelling practice.